As the days get shorter and winter approaches, the holiday season brings people together indoors, and that means holiday food. Summer is more for the outdoor feasting and playing environment so a barbecue is the go-to food style with potato salad, corn on the cob, and watermelon. But this time of year is more about the cookies, cakes, and sweet treats beloved by all during this season. Heavy creams and buttery sauces are all designed to provide all the extra calories this colder season requires for us to keep ourselves warm when it gets chilly. We need those extra 20 pounds we are packing on in order to survive the winter.
But wait a second. I have central heat and air. I don’t need caribou furs or even a sweater to stay warm. I have electric lights, a gas stove, hot running water day and night just the same as I have during the summer. So why am I trying so hard to pack on 20+ extra pounds for the winter? I don’t have the challenges my forefathers had trying to survive the rigors of a cold winter. If I want to maintain my weight during the holidays, I need to stick with either a low carb lifestyle or a low-fat lifestyle. Because as soon as you combine carbs and fat together it signals your body to put on weight by storing the fat in your fat cells. Somehow that truthful fact does not change my desire to eat all those high fat and sugar foods this time of the year. What can I do about that? My taste buds have not caught up with the 21st century. My choice is to adapt my cooking skills to fit the reality of my current situation. There is nothing that really replaces the flavor of fats, but you can replace the sweetness with low carb alternative sweeteners and sugars. Here is a great example:
Keto Marshmallows
Keto marshmallows are actually super simple to make and turn out super fluffy, bouncy, and sweet. They keep a long time in the fridge, and you can add flavors to them to make them really interesting. Put 3 tablespoons of gelatin in a deep bowl with 1/2 cup of water and let it sit a bit while you make the “sugar” syrup. For the syrup, put either 1 cup of xylitol or 1 1/3 cups of allulose into a saucepan along with 2/3rds cup water. Heat this up until it bubbles for 2 minutes. Measure out ¼ tsp salt and 2 tsp vanilla for adding later. Grease a 9×9 pan with coconut oil.
Now for the fun part – whipping it together for 12 to 15 minutes. This step is much easier if you are using a stand mixer. A hand mixer will work just fine and that is what I used the first time I made marshmallows. But 15 minutes standing there mixing is a long time. Pour the hot water/sugar mixture into the softened gelatin and mix on low for a few seconds to blend together well. Now switch to high speed and mix, mix, mix. After 6 minutes of mixing add in the salt. After 12 minutes add in the vanilla and any other flavors you want to use. Watch the mixture carefully for forming something between soft and stiff peaks. At this point pour the mixture into the greased 9×9 pan and smooth out. Place this into the fridge to cool. In a couple of hours the marshmallows will be ready to cut and eat.
Keto Holiday Sugar Cookies
Here is another seasonal favorite – sugar cookies you roll out and cut into holiday shapes. You can even frost them with different colors, and yes, even the frosting is keto/carb-free. Ingredients:
2 cups fine almond flour
2 Tbs. Coconut flour
¾ cup butter
½ cup Dr. Dave sugar or similar
1 large egg
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Warm the butter till soft and cream the butter with the keto sugar till smooth. Blend in the egg, salt, and vanilla. Next blend in the coconut flour and finally the almond flour. Let this rest a few minutes while the coconut flour absorbs moisture in the freezer. The dough needs to be cold to roll out properly for using cookie cutters. Turn this dough out onto parchment paper and cover with a large sheet of plastic wrap. Using a rolling pin roll out the dough to a 1/8” thickness through the plastic wrap. Remove the wrap and use your cookie cutters to make your cookies. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Once fully cool these cookies can be frosted.
Frosting ingredients:
½ cup powdered Dr Dave sugar (powder in an herb blender) or ½ cup powdered xylitol or BochaSweet
1 Tbs. Egg white powder
6 to 8 Tbs. room temp water
½ tsp. Vanilla extract or another flavoring
color with beet juice or natural food colorings
The directions are to simply mix the dry ingredients together and slowly whisk in the vanilla and water 1 tablespoon at a time until the desired consistency is reached.
Let’s do one more special treat that is easily converted into a sugar and carb-free holiday treat. This time let’s go all out with a: Chocolate silk cheesecake. Here I would like to introduce you to a crazy idea that has been catching on the last couple of years – Instant Pot cooking. Instant Pot is the brand name for a fancy pressure cooker. By putting things up on trivets inside the cooker, you get the benefits of superheated pressurized steam cooking without things getting wet (mostly). This cuts the cooking time down considerably. For instance, this cheesecake cooks in only 22 minutes instead of the usual 75 minutes in an oven. One note about this recipe, it calls for ½ cup melted chocolate. The recipe I consulted recommended using Lily’s chocolate chips (available at Elliot’s and grocery stores) as they are keto. I don’t like Lily’s, so I used actual Ghiradelli chocolate liquor wafers with a ¼ tsp of powdered stevia. Otherwise, this is a super simple recipe.
Chocolate Silk Cheesecake
Crust:
Mix 1 cup almond flour with ¼ cup keto sweetener, 1 Tbs Cocoa powder, and ¼ cup melted butter. When crumbly put into the bottom of an Instant Pot cheesecake pan. Press down evenly.
Filling:
Cream 10oz of warm cream cheese with ½ cup allulose or Dr Dave sweetener
Blend in ½ cup sour cream
Blend in 2 Tbs Cocoa powder and 1 tsp vanilla extract
Next blend in the melted chocolate
Finally, blend in 2 eggs lightly – too much blending will make the cheesecake fluffy instead of the nice dense style most of us like. Pour into your pan over the crust gently.
Add 1 cup of water to the Instant Pot and set your cooking trivet and cheesecake pan into the pot. Close and seal the lid and start the timer for 22 minutes. Once it finishes it will take probably another 20 minutes to cool down. Some of the steam will probably condense onto the cheesecake, so take a paper towel and soak up the moisture. Let the cake cool in the fridge for at least 4 hours to set and get really creamy. That’s it! Dig in and enjoy! Link to the Instant Pot I use here.
So as you can see, a keto lifestyle does not leave you missing much once you adapt your cooking style. Probably the biggest obstacle I find with patients in convincing them to cut the sugars and carbs out of their diet is that living without the cheap starches requires you to do your own cooking. Commercially prepared foods are almost always full of cheap starchy ingredients. There are very few good keto foods aside from raw ingredients. One option I discovered recently is mealpro.net, which looks promising. Their production facility is right here up the street near Greenback and San Juan. They deliver pre-made meals with some degree of customization, including many keto meals. Never-the-less, you are not going to find anything like these yummy keto holiday treats out there. These you have to make yourself if you want them. What with the last year, cooking is a great indoor activity we may all need to re-learn.
Take care,
David